‘Just one step in a long journey’: RCGP responds to NHS England’s 25/26 Planning Guidance

Responding to NHS England’s 2025/26 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance, Professor Kamila Hawthorne, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said:

“The College has supported the Government’s aspirations to shift care from hospitals into the community, as long as this is adequately resourced. This makes sense as it is a more cost-effective way of delivering care, and patients want to be cared for close to home. As such, ahead of the 10-year Health Plan, expected later this year, it’s encouraging to see the reform needed to enable this shift, as well as more generally improving access to primary care, are priorities in this planning guidance.

“Last year, GPs and our teams delivered 367 million appointments – more than a million appointments a day, and 20 million more than in 2023. Despite these efforts, with millions more appointments being delivered, we know many patients still report struggling to access the care they need.

“Access to care cannot be improved, if we do not have the GPs to provide it. We need significant investment and further efforts to increase the GP workforce, especially in encouraging experienced GPs to remain in the profession longer. As work continues to develop the 10-year Health Plan, it’s vital that it includes initiatives to ensure the workforce to deliver it.

“The College has sounded the alarm regarding the state of general practice infrastructure, with widespread reports from members of crumbling buildings and outdated IT systems. This not only affects patient experiences but our ability to deliver more appointments and train more GPs – so it’s good to see these issues acknowledged in today’s mandate from the Health Secretary.

“General practice is the front door of the NHS, and when our service is overloaded, it is felt right across the health service. It’s in everyone’s best interests to improve patients’ access to primary care.

“The priorities set out in today’s planning guidance, begin to address the issues, but are just one step in a long journey. We now need more clarity in the upcoming 10-year Health Plan on the resourcing for general practice so that we can improve patient access and help to reduce pressures on the rest of the system. While local flexibility is important, we need to make sure general practice gets the funding it needs at a national level. We have called for the Secretary of State and ICBs to report on the proportion of NHS funding going to general practice, and this needs to be increasing year on year.

“The Government has pledged to move more care into the community and bring back the family doctor, we now need to see how this will be put into practice so that we can deliver the care that we know our patients desperately need.”

Further information

RCGP press office: 0203 188 7659
press@rcgp.org.uk

Notes to editors

The Royal College of General Practitioners is a network of more than 54,000 family doctors working to improve care for patients. We work to encourage and maintain the highest standards of general medical practice and act as the voice of GPs on education, training, research and clinical standards.